Karin got lung cancer: "It was death for me"

Karin Liljelund has spread lung cancer. She was diagnosed in 2014 and then she had an eight centimeter tumor in the lung and metastasis in the thigh and back.

- Lucky, you might say, is that I have a type of lung cancer that today can be treated very successfully with target-controlling drugs.

But when Karin first got her diagnosis, she didn't think she would live that long. She planned to die within two years. Five years later, at the age of 72, she goes on three-month checks where she X-rays the brain and lungs and the entire abdomen to see that the cancer has not spread.

- So I live in some kind of three-month cycle. And every time it feels like you go to your own execution.

The proportion of cancer patients in Stockholm County who survive their illness five years after the disease has been found has increased. When it comes to prostate cancer, for example, the proportion has gone from 90 to 97 percent between 2000-2014. For ovarian cancer from 47 to 60 percent and for chronic lymphocytic leukemia from 77 to 94 percent over the same period.

The reason for the development is that research has made great progress, says Anna Starbrink (L), the Health Region Council.

"It is due to revolutionary good drugs that have emerged, an improved possibility of radiotherapy and that the diagnostics have become so much better," says Anna Starbrink.

Karin Liljelund feels hopeful for the future.

- My metastases are in hibernation, you might say. The new medicine I'm taking that is better at getting into the brain has managed to remove the metastases there and I'm actually feeling really good. I have some side effects, but not so much that it impairs my quality of life.